Bliggity bliggity blog bluh blaow!

Ladies & others, I have been at this Blog thing for a very short time, barely almost two years at this time. In this time I have done some research into what a Blog is, what it's purpose is and how it can be successful spiritually as well as maybe financially.

I've found it very rewarding and slowly but surely my readership has grown. Many of my friends will bring up what I've written in conversation, and as I intended with the Meme-Orables, I have a place on the Intarwebs I can go and quickly grab whatever I want to show someone.

But, what do I look for in a blog?
Below are a few of the blogs I currently read and why.

Topless Robot

This site is a powerhouse. Updating multiple times a day, all work week long, there is never a want of content on this sight. With regular lists and a weekly, terror article(FFF) I've even seen memes born from this site. Although I don't read every single post, I get a lot of my nerd news from this site that I otherwise would have never sought out.

Islands In The Sky

The blog site for a very fun, very well drawn, comic. They update semi-regularly, at LEAST once every two months with how far along they are in their process, what cons they will be at, the Con reports, and any other events they might be involved with.

Hanzi-Smatter

It's a site run by a couple people who speak several asian languages. They receive all sorts of crazy media with different asian calligraphy and then decode them for what the meanings ACTUALLY are. Brilliant.

Frost is The New Black / Steampanku

These two blogs are run by the same author, Krizzlybear, "Frost" is a Wow centered, specifically, Frost mage-centric, and he updates semi-regularly whenever he has a strats or something goofy to put up. As well as Steampanku, which is his blog for his love of Asia-centric Steampunk. I have personally found it fairly informative as far as what Steampunk literature entails as well as exploring facets of a far east flavor to the genre. It hasn't been updated recently, but his past posts are still a source point for much of my own research.

Empowered Fire

Chicks play WoW too, they are very vocal, and they may not like being called chicks, now that I think about it. A couple fire/arcane Magesses, they constantly discuss and explore many topics pertaining to the fem-WoW community, everything from why "rape" is not an acceptable verb outside describing a terrible sex act, to how the new patch changes will effect vanity pets and how "pretty" an avatar is. (Don't even begin to delude yourself, most guys are VERY concerned with how their toons look, I'm looking at you, fire festival ensemble, guy.) Haven't updated in a while, well thought out posts.

A little Bark, A Little Bite

My Guildie! A stalwart druid, great raider, better friend, she has been playing WoW for a long while, and been blogging about it for slightly less time but is still entertaining to read. Semi-regular updates from simple screenshots, to strats, to personal reflections on the drama and social aspect of Azzeroth.

Tails From the Con / All the World's A Stage

My lovely and talented Fiancé's blogs, one is the adventures of T1nk, the Con Fairy, dispensing hygiene products and sarcasm in equal measure on the con floor. She's been quiet due to con season being over, but should be picking back up come next spring. "Stage" is her theatre blog as she has restarted her passion for stage, updates constantly with casting calls and various events throughout the South Bay, as well as reflections and experiences of her own.

Slice, Dice, & Dish

Mr. "Steve" Wes O'Leary's Blog which features three of his passions, food, table top gaming & weaponry. He hasn't updated in a while, and I'm still waiting for a guest spot from him detailing a Pathfinder game he ran at S.G.I.S.Con IV, but it's all good. The stuff he has up there right now is still worth a read.

Playing D&D With Porn Stars
This is one of the most entertaining and resource rich gaming blogs I read. With a video tie in to The Escapist's I Hit It With My Axe, Zak is constantly throwing out ideas, concepts, commentary, and tables, oh boy, does he love him some tables. As well as, yes, his gaming group (as well as himself) are comprised of people in the adult entertainment industry, and they are all cool. Update: "I Hit It . . ." was dropped from the escapist but they are still gaming maniacs, we just have to hear about it through Zak now.

The Art of Manliness
My Man-Buddy/Lost Boy Homie Gilliam introduced me to this Blog a few years back and I have been a devoted follower ever since. Constantly updating about many manly topics not only does it ask the question "what is it to be a man?" It looks at the many concepts of "man" and how to be a gentle man as well as a manly man, great articles, many great guest posts.

Gnome Stew

AND yet another Gaming Blog I follow, mostly focused on the Game Master aspect of gaming, has won several awards for gaming resource as well as blog quality. I love the Gnome community, always striving to better and enrich the gaming universe.

Wolf Gnards

A fantastically Nerdy Blog. Mr. Gnards is a blogger for you if you enjoy my sense of humor but wished for more graphs and more 80's retro references. His fixation with werewolves & rufio keep his nerd cred strong, and his sense of awareness of the Geek culture are constantly being displayed over at "Gnards."

There are a few more, but this is a big dent.

The ones that update all day everyday inspire me, the ones that only update weekly, inspire me, and those that update, maybe, every . . month(s) . . ish? inspire me! They give me a clear guide of what a readership will tolerate as far as update schedules and content length. And which blogs, regardless, I will return to again and again because of content of the blog.
I would like to thank, all bloggers I've come across for being the inspiration and examples, for better and worse, that help keep me spewing my mind across this intarweb.

MemeOrable: Meme-Man Outta You

What the hell is up with "Ill Make a Man Out of You"? (Sorry if I sounded like Seinfeld for a second there, but honestly, I question this.)

When and where did our collective consciousness decide this was an accepted meme to be filtered and parodied?

Forget it. I think I understand. This song is REALLY good. So, pick the vid that tickles you, or the "true vid" if you want the highest musical quality I've heard out of all of them, clear some room to get down to, make sure you're in a room where you can sing your lungs out without interruption, and blast it loud!

A Blog I read consistently, Frost Is The New Black put up a nice little thing:
"(February is February Album Writing Month! For 28 days, musically minded individuals write 14 songs. This year, my concept album will be about WoW parodies to popular songs.)

Track 2: I’ll Make Alliance Out of You (parody of “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan)"

as well as . . . .

Know Your Role . . . in WoW: DPS

L2DPS, when your tank is not cookie cutter spec, when your healer isn't geared, why dps SHOULDN'T be a dime a dozen!

Hello again WoW enthusiasts. Termenus, your friendly neighborhood frostie mage-tank, here once more. Today I come to talk to you about something other than my love of frost, my hatred of A-holes, nor how there should be an "of Stonard" title for the number of times my raid members took my port without looking where they're clicking.

No. Today is for people who suck at dps. No, not people who have low damage or slow "deeps" as the kids have been using colloquially. T3h sk1llz, if you will. I have been dps from day one and although I am making forays into tanking and healing, my first toon was a hunter. You want to talk about managing aggroe, talk to a hunter player from pre-BC/post -mob stats- wow. (in early WoW your pet had the same stats as the mob you tamed, effectively having an equiv level mob for help, they fixed that later) You had to pay attention to your pets aggroe and how fast you were shooting, what crits you would hit. Have you ever heard of the "two growl/sunder rule" ? I sure have.

My entire "High End/Hard Core" career has been as a frost mage and for good reason. When I first rolled a mage (early/pre-BC) I recognized them as a fun nuke with a low aggroe rotation. This was a bonus to me as I had been an aggroe magnet on my hunter numerous times in old 5-mans. I had heard numerous horror stories of dps over-aggroeing and pulling the mob, getting mass healed by the healer, getting squished because you're not the friggin tank, then getting the healer killed . . . WIPE! I felt, as a vital part of a combat unit, that this was part of the job and managment of this sort of thing was necessary.

ITS NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE!!!

When I first started raiding we had the 3 second dps lag. As soon as the tank would pull, heals would keep em up, they would get aggroe (back when 25-mans meant 3+ tanks), then after 3 full seconds raid leaders would call for dps, and they would start in. Many of us who new each other very well, and were fairly high crit dps, would even start out slow before really laying into the boss. Personally, I would wand 3 times, frostbolt 3 times THEN I would pop CD's and roll on up the damage meter.

This was during BC when tanking was a bit different mechanic and too many crits meant aggro for you and your closest friends. Sylvanis forbid you got a string of 3 or more crits, the boss would turn, stomp you down and then move on to your closest relatives and ask them "why, dear Arthas, why would you crit that much in a raid situation, did he think he was in PvP? How did you raise this child?!" And then stomp them into a gooey pulp.

Now I will be the first to admit (when asked directly, no need to tip my hand) that my dps is not as high as other equivalently geared mages (fire & arcane are still higher output) BUT! I have been doing high end content with my guild for almost something like two years now and I am always a welcome raider, from fellow dps up to our GM. Why? Cause I know my class, I know my spec, I know the fights, I listen, and I know how to manage my aggroe. Whenever I mage tank, it's by choice, or someone else missed something.
More so now then ever before any idiot can power level to 80, farm gear for raiding up to the highest content, and go apeshit when the boss is pulled.
Most dps I encounter lately don't have any indication of letting the tank get aggroe. Due to the changes made by blizzard all the the new tank specs allow mediocre tanks to hold mobs while high damage output goes crazy.
That's nice and all, but dps needs to go go the other way. Many of us like to play in weird and different ways we should strive to excel in our roles, regardless of spec. When tanks and healers don't follow the standard specs groups bemoan them and drop them, if dps is poor they just let the other Dps pick up the slack. Ooh, sure, there are 2 more in the party and there are hundreds more waiting to get in. I call bullshit.
No, what I just said was true, but good dps know how to wait to let a tank gain threat before attacking. This allows the healer some time to get the rhythm of the pull and hopefully the dps wont take any excess damage. Or if the healer is the weak role, same. So many of us are so concerned with damage output optimization, proper rotation, and jumping to the top of the recount meter. That's nice and all, to have a huge epeen/wow-wang and to watch those crit numbers roll up the screen. BUT, to me these Are the sings of someone who has gear and a spec. Woohoo, you found Elitist Jerks and made it to 80.

Now really impress me. Play your role with class. Help your tank and heals. I like to use the joke "healbot" and "shieldbot/meatshield." But most of these digs are in jest and with comradeship. Lets stop being dpsbots and start being excellent damage roles. Enrage timers make us necessary but strategy fights require us to be superb, and very few fights are Patchwerk.


Sincerely,
Termenus; Lord Of Ancient Sin - Cenarius, Mage of the Grave Chill, Frost Imp, Mage Tank Extraordinare, Crusader, Ambassador, "of Stonard," Shadoweave Tailor, Goblin Engineer

Warmth for the Cold

Oh Hai guys! Termenus here again, be right down.

Last week I told you guys how I was hanging out on the Public Test Realms, testing the changes to frost spec.

While I was there I joined 3 different guilds, saw a ton of content, new and old, experienced a couple epic stories, and experienced true joy and yet nerdrage in all its WoW glory.

Result? I'm a Frosty, and I'm staying that way, baby!

While on Broxigar, the normal test realm, I randomly received a G-invite to a "meh" guild, and felt fairly safe as an anonymous person in a semi-non-asshole-non-hardcore Guild. I was running the new 5 man Instances
( Forge of Souls[FOS], Pit Of Saron[POS], Halls Of Reflection[HOR] and you need to be attuned to POS, from FOS, and then POS attunes you to HOR. PLUS!! theres a questline that gives you an "event" in HoR. Fun dungeons, great loot, but the attunement thing is gonna be a bit of a hassle so everyone will most likely run them all a ton of times, just to finish HoR once. You get to say Hi to Arthas[AGAIN], see Frostmourne up close and personal in HoR, and you get to spend quality time with the Lady of your faction through all 3[Jaina or Sylvanis])
I never finished HoR, it was disappointing, but I had other fish to fry . . . my damage output! Although some cool stuff did drop . . . .

(That sword is called "Seethe" yes, it's a caster main hand, Aint it cool?)

I specced frost, obviously, and the only enacted changes on the PTR I saw for frost were Deep Freeze and a Glyph for Frost Elementals. (yeah, no sign of a ice lance crit making frostbolts 1 second quicker to cast.) Deep Freeze, the last talent in the mage frost tree, will now do about 2k damage to targets "PERMANENTLY IMMUNE TO STUNS." That's who? Bosses! Yeah damage output increase.
Glyph of Eternal Water makes your water elemental permanent, like out all the time. The trade off is that with this glyph your water elemental loses its AoE freeze. A detriment to PvP in almost every ones opinion. Although that is more damage in pvp, 99% of frost mages rely on that mobile/extra freeze. On top of that, you're still locked down by how often you can summon him, so make sure your not zoning in and out of areas, porting, or dying or your cooldowns will be hurting. Blizz has made changes to elemental pets to make them more mana efficient and I was pleased with my new friends performance.
I even had the idea that maybe Deep Freeze could be a DoT. I like the idea of it "being so cold it burns." But then, Blizz doesn't pay me. And with the new perm. pet some people are saying that Frost is the new Lock. To be honest, I don't care anymore. We've been so underpowered in instances for so long I welcome any change.
Although the changes did not blast me to the top of the damage meter, I saw a definite improvement and feel these changes are an awesome step in the right direction, and I will take them over nothing. I HOPE Blizzard has a bit more in development, but I think I can stand this till Cataclysm.

So one night I jumped into a pugged ToC 10 man with some real jerks and some real pro's. We wiped a couple times on Gormok, no big, communication wipes, we got it together and moved to the worms, wiped a few times as our tanks had two different ideas as to how to tank the worms. lost a few people, gained a few people. We got through gromok, used all the B-rez's at the beginning of the worms, downed the worms with 3 dead, and Icehowl hit. 1 person died from the leftover damage of the worms and there weren't enough heals to keep the lock and the rogue alive, and the priest went into spirit healer. We we're down to me, a DK and shammy healer. Cause the priest had just died we we're all at max hp when Icehwol decided to charge me, he was down to 68%. We lived. the three of us managed to down that ugly beast. After Icehowl the raid fell apart, but not to worry!

A jumped into a Black Temple PuG (great idea, right? I know.) and met a fellow "character copy" player - Crim - an Orc Fury War rocking the purple banana helm! (you know, the new one from Ony. Its a green bobba fette wanna be but all they could afford was a football helmet with a purple dildo strapped to the top. Thats how I rememebr it anyway.) He recognized a kindred spirit in me as one who was looking to actually test the new content as a realistically geared player, not some OP l337 XBox live reject who cant get gear on live realms so you rolled a copy so you can feel like you accomplished something, GET A LIFE AND STOP BEING A DOUCHE BAG AND READ THE TRADE CHAT POST, DONT ASSUME!
( i was trying to get some enchants I'd been meaning to get on live. I tried asking EVERYONE ON THE SERVER WHO HAD A PREMADE CHARACTER WHO AUTOMATICALLY COME WITH EVERY ENCHANT IN THE GAME AND A SHIT TON OF MATS!!!, and all I got was "noob, u have enchanting, duh!" I even got into group with a guy, ported to Ogrimmar and he whispers me "I know what you do" I'm like, whuh? "piss off" he says, and puts ME!?!? on ignore!?!?)
Anyway, Crim and I saw each other in action and acknowledged our "pro" gaming style. He helped me get into - The Non Premades - a guild of, you guessed it, copy characters. Started by 2 interesting female characters, fairly sure they were legit females IRL. Cool people.

I saw an increased dps in my spec, so I came back to live realms. continued to be arcane for a day, literally, then respecced back to frost, and my dps increased by about 300. Familiarity, and devotion to the spec make a huge difference.

To all you people who think Frost can not raid, a dead mage does not put out damage, and a good, alive one, can help you get through the most difficult content. Most fights are strategy fights and require movement, survivability, and technique, not just to be a glass cannon, we do that, but most frosties I know, we do it, and make it look good. Its too bad we cant put out the same numbers as arcane. I respect good fire & arc mages, but this mage is staying frost, for everything.

Light for Frosties?

Hello, My name is Termenus, and I am frost mage(yes, I know, one is arcane spec, but let me explain). Since just before the reopening of the Dark Portal (less than a few months before Burning Crusade) I reawakened as a Forsaken and have been Frost ever since.

As far as putting the Hurt on some Alliance, us Fridgeomancers are more than adequate. I'm horrible at PVP so, I don't really care, so long as I have fun.

My issue for some time, has been damage output in PvInstances. (Raids, dungeons.)
Going back a few steps, until very recently, both my pvp and my pve spec, were TOTALLY frost. I just loved it. Faster casting, survivability and control of combat like none other. Honestly, If I had three more talent points I would love to just fill up the tree. I originally speced it for leveling and fell in love. It was FUN no matter what I was doing. Grinding, farming, 5-mans, raids, questing, world pvp, bg's, helping lowbies. I had "tanked" some old instances at lower levels and even managed to pull & survive fel reavers at lvl 56 while NPC's dropped it.

(WHA!!?? NORLY! I did it for a few friends, they were all very impressed. I was l337. You see, you stand near Thrallmar and wait for it to pat towards the caravan. You use frost barrier AND mana shield and tag it at max range w/ any instant spell. Then, you RUN! Turn around and run straight towards the group of mages and the large orc. Blink to get distance. You SHOULD be able to survive one hit as it breaks the bubbles. Then, ice block, let him thump on you till ice block wears down, and blink again immediately. Double bubble as you run straight into the group. hit cold snap if the group doesn't pull the Reaver right away and keep blinking/bubbling/Ice Block into thrallmar till NPC's pull him, and, watch the show. I used this trick to help my 70 S-priest friend get his kara key. Good times.)

I even raided with a couple guilds in BC, Kara, Mag, even a couple jumps into SSC & TK. Full frost, nobody said anything. The only complaints I got in raids were to not sheep the Healers when they got MC'd. I still believe polymorph should be castable on anyone at anytime, it is a passive aggressive heal. Those were happier times, simpler times, when demons were bad and we could kill all of them we wanted. Alli's stayed on there own damn side of Outland and you didn't have to like them, just not kill them inside Shatt.

Then, with the march upon Northrend, new abilities became available and FREE FIREBALLS!?!?! yes please! I hit 80 and started to get serious about some raiding again.
Two patches later, I'm starting to get into some SRZ BZNZ, Ulduar, ToC, Ony. And no shortage of WoW friends and even fellow mages have been asking/wondering/hinting/threatening, when I was going to respec Arcane for raids.

A fact of life right now for every frost mage is that you do crap for dps. Blizzard is VERY aware of this and did nothing for almost a year or more. I started doing serious research on output and optimization of talents. The truth is that frost puts out 30% less dps than all other raid mage specs. For allot of timed fights this doesn't cut it. On top of this I find it annoying that every spec dips into arcane for Torment the Weak, but whatever.

I respecced my pvp tree to what it is today to accommodate the TTW necessity and starting looking at arcane rotations. I wanted to be a HARD hardcore raider! even at the expense of my beloved, cold love.

So, less than two weeks ago, I made the change to Arcane (see? peer pressure kids). As I lamented my betrayal of the chilly path to my friends and guildies two of the champions of my demise decided to deride me by telling me tales of changes to come making Deep Freeze a pyroblast-like damaging spell. I dismissed them and spurned them for mocking me. But, they are reliable sources, and I had hope. So, I sought ought the information, and lo and behold, they were right. Assholes.

In the next patch, the one currently on the test realms, if a target is PERMANENTLY immune to freeze effects(Bosses), Deep freeze deals some set amount of damage. ALSO, there is a Major Mage Glyph that makes your water elemental permanent at the expense of his frost nova. (100% up time in raids, increasing dps. this COULD be a pvp buff, but almost every pvp frostie LIVES for that extra freeze) AS WELL AS, there are rumors of a change to frozen core that when ice lance crits, your frostbolt's casting time is reduced by 1 second. This is not likely to last or be useful. most of us frosties are already stacking haste and have a really short cast time for frostbolt, with a bloodlust and an icy veins, not to mention any other thousand haste enhancers, its probably going to be thumping against the GCD and becoming overkill.

SO! the first two are currently on the test realms and I have rolled to learn if my dps can become viable once more in raids.

Some people might complain that with a frost elemental up all the time, frosties have started to look like a lok. I call shenanigans, loks look like us. Jaina was there first. Frankly, Raid frost has been so gimped so long I'm not sure any of us care anymore. I approve, it changes the use of the elemental and is potentially a buff for raiding frosties. It also has become apparent that ooming out might be a problem for the pets and that has been worked with.

Deep Freeze as a big damage spell. I approve. Initially I had always wondered why it couldn't be a "cold DoT", you know, "so cold it BURNS!" anything that is permanently immune to stops/stuns. some might argue that's Fire's realm, or once again, a Lock's expertise. but, whatever, honestly. The mechanic is different and you have a very different skill set and raid role in your spell set. You CC differently, you drop aggro differently, you dps differently. I see no huge issues. I will be raiding and instancing on the test realms to see if the spell change & the elemental have a large enough impact to make frost viable again.

I'll report back with more after some raiding & 5-mans, maybe some pvp, on the PTR's and lets keep our cold, clammy, fingers crossed.

Termenus, The Incredible Tanking Mage, Frost Imp extraordinaire, Mage of the Grave Chill, Ambassador, Explorer, Crusader, Sergeant, of Sen'Jin(I'm a raptor whore). Shadoweave tailor, Goblin Engineer -Lords of Ancient Sin- Cenarius, U.S.